Feminism: The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
"The issue of rights for women first became prominent during the French and American revolutions in the late 18th century. In Britain it was not until the emergence of the suffragette movement in the late 19th century that there was significant political change. A ‘second wave’ of feminism arose in the 1960s, with an emphasis on unity and sisterhood; seminal figures included Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/feminism?searchDictCode=all
Feminism isn't something I'm very clued up on in all honesty. I understand, accept, and respect the premise of it, but that's about it. We seem to hear about it more than we should be doing given we live in a developed democratic and civilised country. Weather this is an argument for or against the need for feminism is unclear.
I know it to be quite a touchy subject, and people are easily offended when talking about it. I remember being after the first lecture we had this year (The Gaze and The Media), when I got back to the studio a few people on our course were talking about feminism (a mixture of males and females), I was asked my opinion on it but didn't say anything out of fear of offending anyone given my lack of knowledge on the subject, whereas I normally say what I think about things.
All I know, is that with feminism being a big thing at the moment, any sort of public campaign needs to be careful and make sure it's politically correct, because it's very easy to be accused of being sexist, especially when your target audience is female.
Mumsnet
Building on the feminism thing are groups such as mumsnet, which is an online forum for mums to talk to each other. Again, it's something that I have very little knowledge on, other than from when it's been ridiculed on TV programmes that I watch such as Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week.
Below is a screenshot of their homepage, and it seems like a useful and sensible site, which I'm sure it is in the vast majority of situations. When you've got articles that talk about talking to your children about politics, it suggests a useful and credible site.
But then at the same time, the site produces things like the image below (full article here), which are potentially why they get such a hard time from the media. Some members of mumsnet are involved with it for the political element, not it's primary use as a resource for parenting advice/tips/help. This sort of thing stops you from using groups like mumsnet as an endorsement, which make it initially harder to target a market.
Teenage/Young Single Mums
In stark contrast to things like mumsnet, teenage mums (and dads) tend to be a lot less interested in politics, and tend to need all the help they can get. These aren't the sort of people who're going to have time to be making pancakes.
These sort of mums aren't the ones that I should be including in the target audience, as it's going to take a different message to communicate to these people what I want to communicate, one that would deter the more realistic audience because of the bad press given to teenage/young single mums.
On a personal level, one of my closest friends has recently become a young single mum, and I know for a fact that interacting with the sort of project I'm looking at doing wouldn't be anywhere near the top of her priorities, despite her being well-supported by her job and family.
Conclusion
Targeting mums as an audience is going to be difficult to make obvious, because in this day and age, using stereotypical cliches that apply to mum will get you jumped on for sexism, and rightly so, the same as it would do for racism or homophobia.
Because of this I'll need to make sure my designs are feminine more in their nature than in their message.
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